Doctors often recommend feeding infants and very young children at a regular interval. Doctors also recommend that a feeding schedule be maintained around the clock. The doctor may adjust the recommended feeding interval based on a variety of factors such as the age, weight, and/or health of the child. Doctors recommend three hours as a typical feeding interval for infants and young babies.
Maintaining this feeding schedule can be a daunting task, especially for new parents. It can be very difficult to maintain a feeding schedule that requires feeding a child every three hours around the clock for weeks on end. Feedings are required several times throughout the night, which requires a caregiver to wakeup periodically to feed the child. It may also be hard to maintain the schedule while carrying out various other tasks throughout the day. Sometimes parents may just find it difficult to keep track of when the exact time the last feeding occurred. This problem is further compounded when the child is cared for by multiple persons at different times, for example, where one parent cares for the child for one part of the day and the other parent is responsible for caring for the child another part of the day, or even where there is a third-party caregiver such as an extended family member or a nanny. Keeping track of the feeding of the child and maintaining a regular feeding schedule at a set interval can prove difficult.